(Adapted from applicant's abstract) Over a 5 year period, this program will support 20 postgraduate clinical and academic trainees in a multidisciplinary training program in tissue engineering and implant science, to be operated by the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials (CBM), a multi-university consortium. Focused on research challenges relating to the tissue engineering of vascular grafts, the program offers interdisciplinary training, ranging from design and synthesis of new biomaterials, materials characterization and processing, cell biology, all the way to the engineering of prototype implants and their testing in clinically relevant animal models. The core training faculty at Rutgers are D. Denhardt - Biological Sciences; J. Kohn - Chemistry; and P. Moghe - Chemical Engineering. Clinical core faculty are from the department of surgery of Robert Wood Johnson Medical School of UMDNJ: S Lowry - General Surgery; G. Nackman - Vascular Surgery; P. Scholz - Cardiothoracic Surgery; and the Princeton department of molecular biology: M. Steinberg. Beyond these mentors, more than 15 additional faculty associated with the CBM will participate as research mentors and advisors. In addition to pursuing individual funded research, these faculty collaborate in more than 10 joint biomaterials and tissue engineering investigations, some of them with industrial co-sponsors. Training will be structured both vertically - from "bench-to-bed" - and horizontally - across disciplines - with a unique focus on the material- science aspects of tissue engineering in general and the development of vascular grafts in particular. The outcome will be a new cadre of highly competent, cross-trained clinicians, research scientists, and engineers who can bridge the gap between the material sciences and the life sciences and who will be prepared to contribute to the development of tissue engineering therapies, and an ultimate improvement in national health care. To achieve this goal, four "key competencies" (materials design and synthesis, materials science, cell biology, and prototype engineering and testing) have been defined and the training program has been organized to allow all trainees to gain expertise in these areas of competency. This two-year training program is based on the model of graduate medical education and will be open to M.D., Ph.D., D.V.M., and Pharm. D. graduates. Operating from a home laboratory, each trainee will complete rotations in other laboratories and facilities of the CBM as determined by the trainee's research topic. In addition, each trainee will have experience within one of the CBM's industrial-academic teams. The required program-wide weekly seminar will provide interaction among trainees and the program faculty. Supplementary education for professional development will be provided in medical and scientific ethicss, regulatory affairs, funding, patent law, GLP, GMP and ISO standards, marketing and business development, and communications skills.